Al-Ahram Weekly | Culture | In search of a strategy

		Al-Ahram Weekly Online 15 - 21 November 2001 Issue No.560
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

In search of a strategy
Nigel Ryan on the trials, and consolations, of a new gallery

To open an art gallery in Cairo requires rather more than a pinch of optimism. In the absence of a coherent market -- and with the best will in the world it would be hard to argue that any such thing exists in Egypt -- it takes huge dollops of hope, particularly if your stated aim is to showcase contemporary Egyptian work.
Contemporary art in Cairo -- it is not really the sort of phrase you should include in your business plan, not if you want to squeeze a little loan out of your bank manager. He, after all, is likely to ask awkward questions, along the lines of who buys the stuff? And why? Or better still, what is it? And they are perfectly pertinent questions.
So is a private gallery a viable proposition? Commercially, it would make slightly more sense to deal in the works of dead artists than in those living, not least because this cuts out the most volatile element in the equation: the artists themselves. Alive, they have a living to make, and such is the situation in Cairo that to make that living they overproduce, exhibit in as many places as possible as regularly as possible, and balk at the gallery taking a commission on sales.
With galleries taking an average commission of between 40 and 50 per cent, the artist can sell at considerably less after an exhibition, and still walk away with more money. It is cheaper for the customer, more lucrative for the artist: hardly surprising, then, that a great many artists tip the wink to prospective customers, suggesting that they wait until the show is over when they can buy directly from the artist and cut out the middleman.
And just who buys?

Hamed Oweis, left, Factory Workers, 1953 and, right, Farghali Abdel-Hafiz

There is a market, and a fairly steady one, for obviously decorative pieces, particularly if they offer some kind of narrative, something anecdotal, and preferably nostalgic. It is a taste that has sustained the careers of a great many painters (and here, in the realm of the private gallery, it is mostly painting that we are talking about, and small scale sculpture, nothing conceptual, nothing hard-edged, and nothing so new fangled as to need electricity to function.) The people who buy this kind of stuff, according to Naheda El-Khory, proprietor of the recently opened Zamalek Art Gallery, tend to be looking for a name, together with a sympathetic colour scheme -- ie something that will slot into their sitting rooms without too much ado -- and, if possible, a recognisably Egyptian subject. None of which sounds overwhelmingly contemporary. Still -- Salah Enani and Hassan Soliman are two names that jump most readily to mind -- have mined this particular vein with an unseemly energy. And the former is included in the Zamalek Art Gallery's opening group show, Generations in Contemporary Art. It is a typical Enani, an oleaginous caricature, of a man in crumpled, blue striped pyjamas, lying on a crumpled bed. And if you have not seen this particular painting before, you will have seen a great many like it. Enani has been churning them out for years. Such a sense of déjà vu is all too common, a symptom of the over production, and over exposure, that must surely, by now, have led to market saturation for a great many artists.
A pervasive sense of the formulaic -- one could dignify it with the term stylistic consistency, but in all too many cases that would smack of dishonesty -- has plagued the poor old gallery goer for at least a decade. Few and far between are those artists sufficiently confident to play with the expectations of the audience. If the aim is to sell, the temptation to reproduce what has already sold proves irresistible all too often. Yet given that art, within this context, is very much a luxury item, and with a limited demand, such a strategy must, in the end, be self- defeating.
So the poor old gallerist is stuck in a difficult situation. As much as anyone else, they want to see an eventual return on their investment. But if they are not going to die of boredom, exhibiting the same thing as everyone else, and over and over again, with the inevitable diminishing returns, they are faced with an uphill struggle. A trend must be bucked, and to buck it means chivvying along the audience of potential buyers as well as the artists.
Is it absurd to suppose that on some level quality will speak for itself, and in doing so attract custom? I suspect so but that, in the end, is what must constitute the gallerist's very generous dollop of hope.
That the Zamalek Art Gallery should open with a group show, with 30 artists exhibiting a single piece each, is understandable. Many of the usual suspects have been rounded up: Adel El-Siwi, Gamal Abdel-Nasser, Salah Taher, George Bahgory, Zeinab El-Seginy, Rabab Nimr... the list continues, and there are no real surprises. Abdel-Nasser continues to produce whimsical little sculptures of figures holding umbrellas. El-Siwi is represented by one of those enormous faces, this time in browns, smeared across the surface of the canvas, always, but never quite, on the point of dissolution. But that this too solid flesh would melt. Rabab Nimr's ink drawn figures remain as phallic as ever and Salah Taher is still swirling the paint with a thick brush. Yet punctuating the expected are some quite lovely things, not least a charming domestic interior by Mariam Abdel-Alim. Seated figures, on chairs and sofas, smallish, square, and perhaps with a tad too much gilt, but contemplative and -- a quality all too often looked down on in art -- remarkably calming. There is too, and somewhat surprisingly, an acrylic panel by Farghali Abdel-Hafiz, one of the largest pieces in the show and an impression, it is easy to suppose, of a Cairene street. Amid all the hustle and bustle, from its centre, almost, a figure rises to hold a child. Which may sound a fairly obvious pictorial gambit. The symbolic kitsch, though, is more than neutralised by a lyricism successfully carried by virtue of draughtsmanship and a serpentine use of line. The gallery is planning a one-man show by Adbel-Hafiz later in the season, all the works, like this present, rooted in the urban experience.
Also included in Generations in Contemporary Art (is there not something of a slight contradiction in that title?) is Hamed Oweis. And he, too, later in the season, will be shown by the gallery. Oweis, who is now in his early eighties, is one of the few artists canonised within the odd taxonomy of generations, whose reputation is more than matched by his output. With an all too rare one man show the Zamalek Art Gallery has scored something of a coup. It is an exhibition that bodes well for the gallery's eventual success.
The Zamalek Art Gallery is at 11 Brazil Street.

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*Hamed Oweis, left, Factory Workers, 1953 and, right, Farghali Abdel-Hafiz*